Author: Laura

A creative planning and journalling addict who lives in the North East of England, My current passions are my bullet journal, my Traveler's Notebook for memory keeping, my DSLR for taking nature photos, my new watercolour paints and my papercrafting supplies. I also own and run LJDesignsNE on Etsy where I sell pretty and functional goodies to fellow planner and journaling addicts.
Posted in compassion, mental health, Mindfulness, wellbeing, wellness

Monday Matters: Creating a W.R.A.P. Part 3

Posted on by Laura

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing my experiences of writing a Wellness Recovery Action Plan to support my mental health. In Part 1, I shared what a W.R.A.P. is and why it’s useful as well as how to create a wellness toolbox. In Part 2, I wrote about making a detailed list of adjectives to describe what you are like when you are feeling well and also how to make a maintenance plan of every day activities that help to keep you well. This week, the focus is on triggers and how to cope with them, plus creating a list of early warning signs of deteriorating mental health. Obviously, this is very personal to you as an individual but I hope by sharing some of my lists you get the idea so you can have a go at making your own.

Triggers (AKA Stressors)

Triggers in your life are external events or circumstances that make you feel uncomfortable. They can include situations in your work or personal life that you know tend to stress you out or upset you. Writing these triggers down won’t stop them from happening, but it can help us put coping methods and action plans in place for dealing with the emotions that are felt.

The following are some examples of my triggers so you can get the idea for making your own list:

spending too much time alone

criticism from others

being overly tired

family friction

making a mistake

not being listened to

change to routine

packing to go on holiday

mental health themes in TV dramas

feeling left out

being wrongly judged

My coping methods / action plan

Do everything on my daily maintenance plan – keep routines going

Pick out some activities from my wellness toolbox

Talk to a supportive person about what has happened

Turn negative self talk into positive

Use mindfulness techniques

Do some soothing rhythm breathing

Focus on tasks that are easy to do

Make lists e.g. a packing list for holidays

Early Warning Signs

For this part of the WRAP plan, you make a list of signs that tell you and others that you’re not feeling mentally well. This helps friends and family to look for signs of deterioration and is also good for sharing with medical professionals. For me personally, I have different signs depending on whether I’m starting to become depressed or anxious or developing hypermania.

Signs of depression and anxiety

loss of appetite / comfort eating

feeling tearful over things that wouldn’t usually affect me

lack of motivation

feeling tired even after lots of sleep

agitation

want to be alone

irritability

poor concentration

feeling worthless / helpless

Signs of hypomania

constant talking – unable to switch off

mind in overdrive

erratic driving

spending lots of money to fix things

hyperactivity

sleeplessness

agitation

irritability

flick from one task to another in a bid to get it all done

Coping methods / action plan

Do relaxation exercises – meditation, yoga etc.

Pick out some activities from my wellness tools

Tell someone I trust how I feel

Do everything on my daily maintenance list

Seek medical help

Get some exercise

Ask for support with household tasks

Challenge negative thoughts

Celebrate small achievements

Although I found these tasks difficult to do at the time as I was living with the depression and anxiety symptoms, I do think they are really useful lists to make. I also found it beneficial to talk with others about coping methods and get ideas from them too.

I hope you are finding these posts informative and useful. I really recommend creating your own WRAP either by yourself or with a loved one or therapist. Sitting down and really thinking about yourself and what you are like at different times can really help. Also if you can feel yourself becoming stressed or unwell, you can put things in place to help prevent you from becoming worse.

Of course, the current situation with the virus is a huge source of stress and worry so, now more than ever, we need to look after ourselves and ensure self care activities are high on our agenda. A lot of our routines and aspects of our daily lives have changed beyond our control and for many, this will be one of your main triggers so make sure you put things in place to help you cope.

Until next time, stay home and stay safe and well,

Posted in lifestyle, lockdown

Enduring lockdown: a guest post from my 8 year old niece

Posted on by Laura

The UK has been in lockdown for a while now, forcing everyone who can stay home to do so. I asked some of my family and friends to write guest posts for my blog sharing how the government enforcement has affected them personally. You can read about my life here, my mum’s experiences here, my husband who is an office worker now working from home here and my university student friend’s point of view here. The next in the series is from my eight year old niece who has written down how the situation has affected her. It’s taken her a while to do this little job for me as she’s really not in work mode right now and writing is such a chore!

Boris Johnson announced that schools were going to be forced to close from Friday 28th March to all pupils except those from families of key workers and vulnerable children. This has meant that most school aged children are now being kept at home, many being looked after by parents who are working from home too. As far as I’m aware, a lot of mums and dads are attempting to home educate their kids as they’re worried about them missing out but I imagine it can’t be easy for them. My brother says that the school is providing activities but these are just to consolidate what has already been taught as you can’t expect parents to teach their children new things.

How my life has changed

Hi everyone, my name is Lexi and I’m 8 years old. I’m Auntie Laura’s niece and my daddy is her brother. The coronavirus has stopped me from going to school and seeing my friends. I can’t go to the park or swimming or do any fun stuff. It’s hard to stay inside because I don’t have that much stuff to do. I miss all of my family and when the coronavirus has gone I want to go out to a park or somewhere with my family and friends.

Keep safe,

Love Lexi

And just in case you want to see how lovely her writing is and what a great speller she is, here’s the paper copy:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts Lexi. Hopefully lockdown will be over soon and your Auntie Laura and Uncle Michael can come for a visit and go out somewhere nice with you.

Posted in Planning and journaling, wellbeing, wellness

Grateful in April: being thankful for what I have despite the current circumstances

Posted on by Laura

This month, as I mentioned in my vision board post, I want to focus on the positives in my life despite the awful situation that we as a nation find ourselves in currently. In order to do this, I decided to make a one-line-a-day gratitude log in my BuJo. I also remembered that I bought a little book from Paperchase a while back which is a little journal called ‘5 Minutes Before Bed’ and in it you record thoughts of the day. I hope my post will inspire you to do something similar and, with any luck, it might lift your spirits at this difficult time.

A quick check on the Paperchase website has shown me that the book is no longer available to buy but it would be really easy to do something similar in your bullet journal using sentence starters such as Today…, Thinking about…, Happy about… Dreaming about… etc. You could even add your own brush lettered messages and decorate them in different ways.

It might seem that, in the current situation, with Covid-19 and all of the anxiety and sadness it has brought, that there might not be much to feel grateful for right now. However, if you focus on thinking about the good things in your life, despite all the bad, you can definitely find at least one reason to be thankful each day. Here’s a list of some of what I’ve come up with this month so far, in no particular order:

I’m grateful for…

– The NHS staff who are working tirelessly and putting their lives on the line every day

– The bright sunshine and breeze which dried my washing on the line

– My husband for supporting me in everything I do and being so understanding

– The shop which was open and had an artist’s board and a flat wash brush so I could do my watercolour painting successfully

– The staff at my local supermarket who are working harder than ever to keep the shelves stocked and serve me with all of the items I need

– My little collection of gorgeously scented Body Shop soaps that have kept my hands clean

– The cute moorhen chicks in the park that brought a smile to my face

– The blog readers who enjoy my posts and give them a like or a comment

– The memories of days out in the past which I can talk about with my husband

– WhatsApp and Messenger so I can keep in touch with friends and family

– My hamster, Rosie for making me giggle with her antics

– The mental health nurse who listened so carefully during my telephone therapy and provided such helpful advice

– Watercolour painting tutorials on YouTube that I’ve used this month to develop my basic skills

– The funny clips about the current situation that have made me laugh out loud

– The kindness volunteers have shown to people in need at this time

I hope you have enjoyed reading my short list and it has made you think more positively about the current situation. I’m not saying life is all wonderful right now but there are so many things to be grateful for, including the fact that we’ve all come together to do our bit to stop the spread of this awful virus. I would really encourage you to write down or draw a gratitude list or do some reflective journaling each evening as a way of improving your mental health and wellbeing during this difficult time.

Keep safe and keep well everyone,

Posted in mental health, wellbeing, wellness

Monday Matters: Creating a W.R.A.P. Part 2

Posted on by Laura

Last week, I introduced the idea of creating a Wellness Recovery Action Plan (W.R.A.P.) as a tool for monitoring your own mental health and keeping yourself as well as you can. I discussed what a W.R.A.P. is and went on to share the first step as the creation of a list of wellness tools i.e. things that you enjoy doing and that make you feel good. If you haven’t seen this initial post click here to read it before you learn what to do now. Today, I’m going on to the next step which focuses on what you are like when you are well and on listing daily maintenance tasks that you really need to do to keep yourself well.

Having drawn up your wellness tools, you’re invited to consider what you are like when you are feeling well. When I did this, I got really upset as it was a reminder of how I am when my mental health is good and I felt like I’d not seen the real Laura for such a long time. Now I’m back to feeling great, I can look at my list and celebrate who I am.

In as much detail as possible, you should make a list of how you feel when you are well. Here’s a few examples from my list so you can get the idea:

talkative

friendly

full of positivity

calm

productive

energetic

loving

decisive

assertive

good sense of humour

The idea behind doing this is so that you can spend some time really thinking about the kind of person you are when you’re feeling well and then you will be easily able to spot signs that you are starting to struggle and put steps in place to prevent decline in your mental health.

Having written your list, you should then go on to think about the things you need to do each day to keep yourself feeling well. What you note down here should be every day things that you must do to maintain a state of wellness. This is known as your ‘Daily Maintenance’ plan. Here are some of the things on my list but obviously yours may have different tasks and activities on depending on how you spend your time.

Daily Maintenance:

get up by 8am

have cereal, dried fruit and coffee for breakfast (or an alternative as a treat!)

take a vitamin tablet

check my plan for the day in my bullet journal

brush my teeth

shower

dry my hair and get dressed

Do yoga, some stretches or go for a walk

Do my morning activities

Have a healthy lunch

Do my afternoon activities

Make dinner and eat with my husband

Do a relaxing activity from my wellness toolbox list

Do chores e.g. dishwasher etc.

Make a plan for tomorrow in my BuJo

Relax

Take my medication

Go to bed by 11pm and enjoy at least 7 hours sleep

Obviously my plan changes depending on whether I’m attending classes or going out for the day, but it does give you a basic structure to your time and would be really helpful to refer to in order to keep yourself on track and productive. It’s also good to look at when you aren’t feeling so good as you can add small tasks to your notebook or bullet journal and celebrate the little successes in your day e.g. keeping yourself hydrated or doing a short household chore.

We were given a handout from the Recovery College in which to write down our lists but when I started to feel better, I made my own all bright and colourful pages using a MS Word document and then printed them out and put them in a folder. If you’re feeling particularly arty or love drawing, you could even create a pictorial list.

I hope you’ve found today’s post useful and that it has given you some insight into the usefulness of creating a W.R.A.P. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them in the comments.

Until next time, stay home and stay well,

Posted in art, compassion, creativity, Planning and journaling, Setting goals and intentions

Creating a lockdown vision board

Posted on by Laura

With the country in lockdown for the foreseeable future many of our routines will have changed and so will our priorities in life. With this in mind, I decided to create a vision board which focuses on what I want for myself right now. This post is all about how I made it and includes a brief explanation of each of the elements. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

As one of my goals for the moment is to experiment more with watercolour techniques, I created the background for the board by using a wet-on-wet technique and a limited palette of three colours. I used coldpress watercolour paper which did wrinkle a little but you couldn’t tell when I put it into the photocopier part of my printer. I copied it twice and then orientated them differently to create the two page spread.

After creating the backdrop, I thought carefully about my hobbies and interests and how I can engage in them further. I came up with nine ideas:

  1. to work on my drawing and painting skills
  2. to increase my strength and fitness
  3. to continue to work on my brush lettering (being a leftie makes it hard!)
  4. to grow my blog by posting regularly
  5. to develop my macro photography by using my DSLR in the garden to snap insects
  6. to focus on being grateful for my life even in these difficult circumstances
  7. to practise mindfulness to enable me to live in the moment more
  8. to use my compassion based learning to improve my self love and kindness
  9. to do much more journalling

Drawing and painting

There are some amazing online tutorials out there and I’ve already subscribed to a number of YouTube channels. One of my favourites at the moment, is Shayda Campbell’s florals work which includes lots of sketches of flowers and watercolour techniques which are really easy to follow. Another arty channel that I’ve recently started following is Hullo Alice for watercolour tutorials and bullet journal spreads.

Strength and fitness

I’ve already mentioned my daily yoga practice in a previous post and I’m continuing to develop my ability to do a variety of poses. The style I do is called Iyengar and I’m currently using this channel. I’ve recently ordered a folding chair which I’m hoping in sturdy enough to use.

Brush lettering

I’ve been doing brush lettering using my Tombow dual tips and Fudenosuke hard tip pen for a long time now but still find certain letters difficult. I’ve decided to practise more by doing the lower and upper case alphabets on alternate days and at least one quote per week in my BuJo. The practise sheets I’ve been using are from the magazine publication Simply Lettering. I’ve already made progress but I still think it’s super hard for lefties like me!

This blog

Whilst I was struggling with depression and anxiety I really didn’t have the confidence in myself to work on my blog. I had no ideas and no inclination to put pen to paper. But now, I’m pleased to say that I’m brimming with topics I want to write about and the words flow onto the page with ease. I’m back doing my Monday Matters series and I’m enjoying using my bullet journal again. Also, I hope to share with you some of what I’m doing to work towards the items on my vision board.

Macro photography

My DSLR has been in its case for months now and I’ve just been using my camera phone to take the odd snap. I splashed out on a macro lens a couple of years ago but haven’t really experimented much with it yet. I figure now, as we’re getting lots of insects in the garden, would be a great time to work on developing my skills in this area of photography. I’m not saying I’m going to get shots as wonderful as the one on my vision board but I’m going to give it a go!

Gratefulness

It’s easy to focus on all of the negative aspects of the lockdown but that’s a guaranteed way of getting myself depressed again so I’ve decided that one of the things I’m going to do each day as I socially distance myself, is to record what I’m grateful for. I bought a journalling book from Paperchase a while back called ‘5 Minutes Before Bed’ which includes space to write down your thoughts. There are a variety of different prompts and motivational quotes to keep me focused.

Mindfulness

I attended a mindfulness course at my local wellbeing centre last year and found it really beneficial. However, I haven’t really kept up the practise and really struggled to stay mindful during my period of poor mental health. But, I’m determined to focus on living in the moment and I’ve bought a journaling book to help me do this. The book provides a variety of activities to do to increased mindfulness and a space to write how you got on doing each task. I intend to do a blog post on this when I’ve completed some more of the book.

Self love and kindness

When you are struggling with your mental health, self love and kindness tend to go completely out of the window. I personally found that I had no capacity for self compassion and would constantly beat myself up over how I was feeling. Now, with an increase to my medication, I’m well again and able to show love and kindness to myself and others. I chose the bright heart hands image to remind myself that whilst working towards my goals, I want to remember to approach things with a gentle kindness.

Journalling

I’ve already mentioned the two journals which I’m using at the moment but I intend to reflect on how I’m doing my writing in my bullet journal regularly too. I find journaling really therapeutic and an important way of focusing the mind so it’s definitely something I want to do each day.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my vision board. As you can see, I’ve got plenty of ideas for self development that I want to put in place over the next few months. Maybe it’s given you inspiration for things you’d like to do whilst in lockdown mode. However, if this is not where your head is at right now and you find yourself lacking in motivation due to the current situation, then just accept that this is the case and focus on self care and self love to get you through. There’s nothing wrong with having lots of down time right now as you get used to life whilst social distancing. However you intend to structure your life in the coming weeks, remember to keep safe by keeping your distance and celebrate any small achievements along the way.

Until next time, take care,